What price freedom?

I've searched for freedom nearly all of my life

Most of my struggle has been in being a wife

Giving away my most precious possession

My personal power lost all self expression.....

This was the first verse of a poem I wrote back in 1999...fast forward to 2012 .....all I can say is wow!

If I had known then what I know now I wonder what direction I would have taken when standing at that crossroads?

Would I have gone left, would I have gone right or would I have  marched on straight ahead with my head held high?

Looking back at that difficult time in my life, I can only speculate as to what impact a little knowledge might have had on me.  

What if I had been given a glimpse of what riches the future held for me?

My advice to me might go something like this......

Dear Precious Self

You will regain your freedom and grow in personal and emotional intelligence, believe it!

You will meet an amazing  girlfriend, who will like you for who you are, who will enjoy your company, who will support you through the ups and downs of life and that your friendship will still be as strong 13 years on.

Travel will feature prominently in your life and will become a way of life for you and in your wildest dreams just imagine that you will almost fill a passport with stamps from so many different countries in just 5 years. 

The perfect job will be presented to you that will be exciting, challenging and rewarding and will change the course of your life entirely...a defining event in your life and one you will so often have cause to reflect on and to be grateful for many times over.

 Your confidence will grow and expand tenfold and you will be brave enough to travel overseas alone to teach English in China and Vietnam, imagine that??

The most  amazing and eclectic bunch of friends will be attracted to YOU,  along your many colourful journeys from many different places both in Australia and overseas.

You will embrace your new life with open arms, you'll be as free as a butterfly, you'll love your own company, you'll make your own decisions and you'll be happy, truly happy!

Yes, if only I could have been able to give 'me' some tips, some insight, some direction...hindsight is the most wonderful teacher.

It has been said that 'a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing' and who could possibly know if this would have been the case for me 13 years ago...I can only imagine that my fragile and defeated self would have struggled to believe that any of these things could possibly be true or could just the slightest little bit of trust and hope in such wild and seemingly unattainable dreams have impacted my life for the better back then when it all seemed so hard.

But then again it is also said 'that those things that don't beat you make you stronger' and I believe that to be the truth for me.

I like who I am today, I like where I am, I do like the freedom I have so rightly earned and I am happy in my own skin.

A boss once said to me way back in the early 80's when I had just been promoted to a retail management position and he said 'remember this'.....'when the going gets tough, the tough get going' .  It obviously resonated deep within me and I took it into my work and more importantly I embraced it and made it one of my mantras in life.

As Forrest Gump once said 'life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get'.